News and Alerts

On February 4, 2022, CPR responded to MassHealth’s RFI on health equity and proposed strategies for the collection and use of social risk factor data.  CPR’s submission pointed to the intersection between poverty, race, age, and disability as factors that can create multiple, compounding barriers to care. 

Morgan Whitlatch, CPR’s new Director of Supported Decision-Making Initiatives, has been elected as co-chair of the Rights Task Force of the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities (soon to be renamed “Consortium for Constituents with Disabilities”) (CCD).  CCD is the largest coalition of national organizations working together to advocate for federal public policy that ensures the self-determination, independence, empowerment, integration, and inclusion of people with disabilities in all aspects of society. 

Based upon its successful ADA class action litigation in Oregon, CPR partnered with Disability Rights North Carolina (DRNC) to pursue an initiative and potential litigation to expand supported employment services and eliminate reliance on segregated sheltered workshops in North Carolina. 

In April 2021, the Syracuse Law Review convened a Symposium to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the ADA.  Several disability practitioners and professors presented papers and prepared articles for a special volume of the Review.  CPR’s Legal Director, Steven Schwartz, and Managing Attorney, Kathryn Rucker, authored a seminal article on class certification under the ADA titled: The Commonality of Difference: A Framework for Obtaining Class Certification in ADA Cases After Wal-Mart.

Fueled by the publicity surrounding Ms. Spears’ case, the U.S. Senate Judiciary’s Subcommittee on the Constitution announced its intention to hold a hearing to look at due process problems associated with guardianship and to explore possible solutions. CPR, Quality Trust, the ACLU, and a number of other organizations and allies worked over a six-week period to influence the focus of the hearing and to ensure that there was ample testimony by people with disabilities and their families about the difference that Supported Decision-Making has made in the lives of people.

On September 27, 2021, Judge Michael Ponsor approved the Joint Motion for Dismissal in Hutchinson v. Patrick, finding the defendants to be in substantial compliance with the 2013 Amended Settlement Agreement.  This Order concludes a 14-year class action lawsuit which dramatically expanded outreach, transition planning, and home and community-based services for individuals with Acquired Brain Injuries (ABI) in Massachusetts.

On Monday, October 18th, Morgan Whitlatch will assume her new role as Director of CPR’s Supported Decision-Making initiatives. She is succeeding Michael Kendrick, who has overseen CPR’s myriad SDM pilots and monitored the SDM virtual resource library since 2016. 

On August 24, 2021, CPR joined Massachusetts officials in requesting dismissal of Hutchinson v. Patrick, an ADA class action lawsuit which dramatically expanded outreach, transition planning, and home and community-based services for individuals with Acquired Brain Injuries (ABI).  Originally filed in 2007, the Hutchinson case was brought on behalf of thousands of persons with ABI who were unnecessarily institutionalized in nursing and long-term rehabilitation facilities.

CPR and its partners, the Disability Rights Center of Kansas, AARP Foundation, and the law firm Shook, Hardy & Bacon, have reached an agreement with the State of Kansas to expand mental health services and provide more community residential options for individuals living in, or at risk of being admitted to, Nursing Facilities for Mental Health (NFMHs).

In a 2-1 decision, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a 2020 FDA rule banning the use devices that deliver electric shocks to individuals with self-injurious and aggressive behaviors. he devices at issue, also known as Graduated Electronic Decelerators (GEDs), are manufactured and used in only one program – the Judge Rotenberg Center based in Canton, Massachusetts.